


all through our lives

by valentulum



Series: Actual Real Trans Representation By Actual Real Trans Person [1]
Category: Interstellar (2014)
Genre: 4+1 fic, Adheres to canon, Bisexual Character, Bisexual Female Character, Cooper does not actually appear, Domestic Violence, Endgame F/F, F/F, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Lots of reference to the Cooper & Murph dynamic/angst, Mentions of Cancer, Murphy Cooper is hella bisexual and nobody can convince me otherwise, Trans Character, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-10 06:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4381283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valentulum/pseuds/valentulum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the four relationships that didn't work and the one that did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all through our lives

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry this fic is such a mess, it is largely unbeta'd and minorly edited. I also didn't know how to end it, so that seems a bit rushed. I hope you enjoy anyways.

**I.**

He's lean and rugged, tall and tan. His accent dips and rolls, like the warpings of space and time. His name is Harv. Harv is a farmer, through and through. Even in the old, old days when there were more people than livestock and every continent had an occupant, Harv's family farmed. He's also completely complacent with the dirt.

Harv is a welcome break from Murphy's daddy issues and NASA. For a while, she's able to forget about the stars and find her place on the dirt. She fools herself, for a few months, that she could actually do it. Leave NASA behind. Leave the stars behind. Leave her father behind. Because, that's what her father did to her, didn't he? 

Harv turns out to be woefully incompatible with Murph. 

Murphy loves calm. Harv does not. Murphy questions. Harv does not. Murphy, behind her rebellious façade, has bigger aspirations beyond working the Earth, like every other kid in their class. Harv does not. She also decides he's too much like her father. 

Perhaps that's why she wanted to date him in the first place.

Murphy breaks up with him behind the secondary school. 

"It's not you, it's me..." she says, feigning an apologetic disposition.

Harv only nods in response.

**II.**

Clara is different. A complete 360 from what Harv was. 

They meet in Physics 12. Clara is a grade older. They are two of six people in the class. The teacher is a dark-skinned man who looks as if he was due to die last week. Their textbooks are worn and falling apart, perhaps only held tower by the duct tape liberally applied to the spines. 

"Bullshit, hm?" Murph says, gesturing to Clara's textbook. 

Clara looks back, a surprised expression on her face, "Oh, oui. The, ah, text is quite worn." French. The girl sitting next to her is French. 

Murphy finds this oddly attractive. 

Okay.

Murphy finds the girl attractive in every way. 

She likes her curly hair that is both golden and brown at the same time. She likes her fluid gesticulations and the way she bites her lip when she flirts. She likes her femininity and the fact that she is absolutely nothing like her father. 

Nothing.

They talk about science and philosophy and what kind of meat they think is in the cafeteria chicken nuggets on their dates. Their dates mostly consist of sitting in any tree that is ascend-able. Murphy smokes cigarettes during these dates, and Clara always tells her to stop, something about ruining her lungs.

Murphy thinks she sounds like her father. 

They eventually break up because, while Clara looks nothing like Cooper, she is also still, exactly like Cooper. Clara thinks, Clara dreams and she has her gaze permanently fixed to her version of the stars. Art. 

After weeks of ignoring Clara, effectively dumping her, Murphy climbs up onto the roof for the first time in seven years and looks at the stars all night long.

She realizes how much she misses them. 

**III.**

Murphy is done with good girls. Or good boys, for that matter. She wants to rebel, she wants to wear all black, she wants to scream "FUCK THE SYSTEM" because she truly doesn't give a shit. Her dad left her, her grandpa died and now her brother is all she has left. Murph needs to escape the incessant cesspool of shit feelings and poor circumstances. 

Reece is that escape. 

In the months they dated, they had more sex than can be counted on all fingers and toes, spent more money on pot and cigarettes than all of their class percentages combined and gotten arrested more than all other eighteen year olds had in their godforsaken town put together. She went on wild joyrides in their beater and stole her dad's old truck a couple times. On the last time, she crashed it. But hey, its not like she cared about the damn thing anyways. Its not like she cared about him. All Murph cares about was her next hit.

Reece was like a high that never had to end. The rush of crime, the rush of drugs, the rush of their smooth hands on her skin and gentle whisper in her ear was more addicting than any trip.

But, with all good highs, there are endlessly deep lows. 

Reece beat her. She didn't know they was capable of it. Reece, with skin as smooth as alabaster marble, deep brown hair and piercing blue eyes seemed too regal to relegate themself to such a dark action.  Slut. Attention-whore. Ugly. Fat. Fake. Bitch. Their list of verbal torments went on and on. But still, Murph came crawling back, because when you're addicted to something, it isn't as easy as throwing away the joint or dissolving the powder down the drain. You need more and more until the drug consumes you; your mind becomes the drug and soon enough, there isn't enough room up there for yourself.

It finally stops when Reece gets arrested for shoplifting. They're sentenced to months.

At first, Murph is upset. Where is her pot going to come from? Where is her sex going to come from? Where is her next high coming from? But then, after a few weeks, she realized all their bullshit. She also realized her own. 

A month after Reece was checked into jail, Murph also got checked into an institute. Only hers was a drug rehab centre in a mental hospital, and she was going to make sure that she became sober, and made something of herself. Murph didn't want to stay in her father's shadow all of her life.

**IV.**

She's older now. Wiser now. She went through rehab, did her time and came out as clean as a fairy tale. Murph came back to NASA and picked up the broken pieces of her life before Reece. She mended bridges with Dr. Brand and continued her work on the gravity equation alongside her mentor. Murphy throws herself into her school and work, the two slowly blending together. She spends years underground, only emerging to visit the farm a couple times a year. 

Grandpa died. 

She and Tom, and his wife buried him in the back forty next to her mom's grave.

Murph didn't cry. 

 

She's forty today. The same age as her father when he left. She tries to resist the temptation to walk by the broadcast room as she walks by, but she just can't. 

Murph sends him a video. A video she swore she'd never make when she was twelve. A video she refused to make for thirty years. She made it. And it hurt like hell, but per usual, feelings get put aside for work. There was no margin for error, no room for distraction when you're saving humanity. But, it turns out that even the most focused can't avoid distraction.

Getty is that distraction. She runs into him at the general store (even NASA runs out of things). His white lab coat is stained with beige dust and her own grey one is white with chalk. He offers to buy her lunch and she begrudgingly agreed. If he's an asshole, she thinks, then at least she can get free food.

Getty's far from an asshole. He's a good, Midwestern man with a docile disposition and a subtle rebellious streak. Getty's a doctor, and a good one. Unfortunately, he's been running out of people to attend to. She grimaces at the horror stories of the dust-related respiratory issues. Murph laughs at his witty humour and dry personality. By the end of lunch, she's decided that getting involved with Getty would not be a bad thing. 

They date, on again off again for a few months. He helps her set fire to the farm, she needs a break the next week. She puts in overtime at NASA, he doesn't contact her for a few weeks. Eventually, they decide to call it off for good. They were good together (and still could be), but that's all they were. Murph and Getty were not a couple of burning desire. They were not a couple that ached to be around each other. They were not a couple truly in love. 

**V.**

Amelia.

Murph smiles at the name, the memory of the woman with bob-cut hair and a sass streak a mile wide twinges in the back of her brain. 

Amelia reminds Murph of her as well. 

Amelia is snarky. Amelia is empathetic. Amelia is silently bold and Murph is absolutely taken with her. Her raven hair holds secrets in their gentle waves and her piercing grey eyes wink at her from behind a pair of old-style glasses. Amelia has an old-Fashioned charm to her, Murph decides. A woman straight out of the Victorian era with her chivalrous ways and philosophical musings. 

They meet in the bookstore. The last bookstore in town and probably the last bookstore in the world. 

Amelia is perched regally atop her stool, behind the cashier's counter. Murph thinks she looks like a queen. She's engrossed in her reading, glasses sliding down her nose and she wrinkles them back up. Murph studies her for a while more. Around her neck is a small pendant with Ursa Major engraved on the face.  Across her wrist an old, old (Murph doesn't know how old) watch, gently worn around the corners of the once-sharp brass links. She feels some small bit of excitement to see the lack of a ring, or tanline on the woman's left ring finger.

Murph doesn't know why she came into the place anyways, something about cookbooks or twentieth century literature that manifested itself into an excuse to get out of the NASA basement for a day. But now, she definitely has an excuse to stay. 

Murph chats her up a little bit. She asks Amelia about her book. Amelia asks her about her job. They end up talking for a half and hour or so before Murph asks Amelia out for coffee. 

Amelia accepts.

Their relationship is not one thing at many times, but many things all at once. Reece was thrilling, Harv was familiar, Clara was too familiar and Getty was safe. Amelia is thrilling, familiar, safe and something entirely new at different times, sometimes a combination of some of those things and sometimes everything at once. Amelia was as unpredictable as a fabled sea storm, yet as calm as lake waters. She was bold and daring and intelligent and beautiful and Murph loves it all. 

After two years, they get married at a small ceremony in front of close friends and family. By now, Jesse and Murph have mended fences and he appears as her Best Man. Amelia's sister, a quiet and demure lady named Olivia is the Maid of Honour. Murph wears her best slacks and blouse and rambles on about Amelia in her (clearly) unplanned vows. Amelia wears a pretty yellow sundress and speaks ever so eloquently about the rambling idiot she is absolutely in love with across from her. 

After one year married, the two have their first child. He comes into the world kicking and screaming with a head of auburn hair and olive skin. He reminds Murph so much of her father, she can't help but name him Joseph, Coop for short.

Their second child comes a year later. She is quiet, and looks at the world with her big, blue eyes with wide-eyed intelligence. This time, Amelia chooses, and she names her Emily, after her grandmother. 

Eight years later, Cooper Station is launched from the ground. 

Ten years forward, Murph writes a book. She thanks her father. She thanks her wife. Murph gets criticized for her delusions about her dad. She gets praised for her relationship with Amelia. Murph thought it would've been the other way around. 

Twenty eight years after, Amelia dies of cancer. It was a long battle, but her body, weak from years of being battered by the dust, finally gives out. 

A month later, Murph asks to be put in cryosleep. All of her children know why. 

Years and years later, when Cooper shows up at Cooper Station, she is awoken for one last time, her wish fulfilled and finally ready to depart the universe. 


End file.
